Spatial Territories Research Articles

Assessing the impact of degree of fusion and muscle fibre twitch shape variation on the accuracy of motor unit discharge time identification from ultrasound images

ObjectiveUltrasound (US) images during a muscle contraction can be decoded into individual motor unit (MU) activity, i.e., trains of neural discharges from the spinal cord. However, current decoding algorithms assume a stationary mixing matrix, i.e. equal mechanical twitches at each discharge. This study aimed to investigate the accuracy of these approaches in non-ideal conditions when the mechanical twitches in response to neural discharges vary over time and are partially fused in tetanic contractions. MethodsWe performed an in silico experiment to study the decomposition accuracy for changes in simulation parameters, including the twitch waveforms, spatial territories, and motoneuron-driven activity. Then, we explored the consistency of the in silico findings with an in vivo experiment on the tibialis anterior muscle at varying contraction forces. ResultsA large population of MU spike trains across different excitatory drives, and noise levels could be identified. The identified MUs with varying twitch waveforms resulted in varying amplitudes of the estimated sources correlated with the ground truth twitch amplitudes. The identified spike trains had a wide range of firing rates, and the later recruited MUs with larger twitch amplitudes were easier to identify than those with small amplitudes. Finally, the in silico and in vivo results were consistent, and the method could identify MU spike trains in US images at least up to 40% of the maximal voluntary contraction force. ConclusionThe decoding method was accurate irrespective of the varying twitch-like shapes or the degree of twitch fusion, indicating robustness, important for neural interfacing applications.

Post-historicism, Post-territorialism, and the Problem of Scale: A Metacritical Appraisal of the Literary-Theoretical Paradigm of ‘Planetary Time’

Wai Chee Dimock’s literary-theoretical paradigm of ‘planetary time’ neatly fits the epithet ‘post-historicist/post-territorialist’ for its simultaneous repudiation of historicist and nationalist approaches to literary critical practice. Opposed to the absolute jurisdiction of temporal periods and spatial territories as literary analytic units, the ‘post-historicist/post-territorialist’ paradigm seeks to tap into the spatiotemporal entanglements of literary criticism to produce analyses of literature that trace the transtemporal and extraterritorial linkages forged by literary processes and their attendant actors. The article primarily focuses on Wai Chee Dimock’s literary analytic scale of ‘planetary time’, an extended temporal scale that, according to Dimock, is intrinsically coupled to a spatial scale of planetary dimensions. While subjecting Dimock’s literary-theoretical approach to a sustained metacritique, the article also intermittently engages with closely related paradigms that could shed more light on the nuances of literary analytic scales. Two analytic scales appropriated from the field of historiography – Fernand Braudel’s extended longue durée and Carlo Ginzburg’s episodic (micro)history – will not only lend an interdisciplinary perspective to this metacritical study, but also underscore the spatiotemporal implications of scale in literary criticism. These insights could help recalibrate literary critical practice by introducing greater self-reflexivity in its deployment of scale.

Scientific Knowledge Map Study of Therapeutic Landscapes and Community Open Spaces: Visual Analysis with CiteSpace

The pursuit of a healthy and comfortable living environment is a key developmental objective for human society. Therapeutic landscapes play a significant role in improving environmental conditions within these spaces. However, current research suggests that there is still much to be explored in this field, particularly in communal open spaces. Based on the Web of Science literature database and using the CiteSpace visualization tool, this study launched a literature review search on the existing research content on therapeutic landscapes in community spaces by means of publication volume analysis, spatial distribution, keyword analysis, co-citation clustering analysis, keyword timeline, and co-occurring word analysis. Based on the research results, the current status and direction of related research are outlined, and the research hotspots and future trends in this field are analyzed. Current research comprises multiple interdisciplinary branches, such as geography, public space, modern medicine, care, horticultural therapy, urban ecology, and more, with theoretical research, caregiving, spatial territories, and research methodology as the main research vectors. It is clear from this study that the current research on community therapeutic landscapes suffers from a lack of coordination between theoretical and practical development, and the related design practice activities are in a vulnerable stage of development. In terms of the population served, specialized research will be one of the directions of development, as there has been a gradual increase in the number of spatial research on the prevention and complementary treatment of various diseases for subdivided groups. At the same time, the research focus in this field has shifted from the physical health of users to their mental health, leading to a trend of public service development with the objective of social health.

Territoriality in Hybrid Collaboration

Hybrid Collaboration, where remote and co-located team members work together using different devices and tools, has already been trending in recent years (e.g., through globalization and international cooperation) but experienced a further boost since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The reason behind this surge in hybrid practices is probably that the crisis revealed aspects of remote collaboration which proved functional and which many decision makers (in industry as well as academia) plan to retain for the future. Thus, hybrid collaboration is an extremely timely topic which should be further studied in the context of CSCW. One major CSCW-anchored concept that has most intensively been researched in co-located collaboration settings where it is usually inherently related to spatial aspects and proximity, is territoriality. Already work on territoriality in fully distributed, remote settings has shown that there are significant differences due to the characteristics of the scenario. In this paper, we focus on territoriality in hybrid settings where we identified a significant research gap, and present the results of a user study with 22 teams consisting of four people each (distributed across two locations at two different universities), collaborating on a problem-solving task. Our findings reveal that more dimensions and communication channels, in addition to space, might strongly impact territoriality and territorial behavior in hybrid collaboration. Besides classical spatial territories also auditory territories frequently emerged. In addition, visibility of and accessibility to certain territories need to be rethought. We discuss these novel findings also regarding their interplay with earlier ones and derive design implications for CSCW systems supporting hybrid collaboration.

Embodied and affective negotiation over spatial and epistemic group territories among school-children: (Re)producing moral orders in open learning environments

This study investigates how schoolchildren organise their spatial and epistemic ‘territories’ among peer groups to constitute local social and moral orders in open learning environments. Open learning environments, the result of recent school reforms in Finland, challenge the conventional organisation of traditional classrooms. We use a microanalysis of naturally occurring video-recorded interactions to show the interactional dynamics of how children produce epistemic and spatial territories by creating moment-by-moment unfolding participation frameworks and emotional alliances. We suggest that the lack of institutional structures in open learning environments withholds children from the territorial shelters that exist in more traditional classrooms. Therefore, open learning environments make students and their peer groups more vulnerable in terms of their social face (Goffman, 1955), including their competence and skills, as they are constantly exposed to other people's observations and criticisms of and interventions in their peer groups. Our results shed light on the tendency of human beings to produce spatial and epistemic structures and moral orders where none exist.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DESIGN IN THE ARCHITECTURAL ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIO-CULTURAL LIFE OF SOCIETY

The article is devoted to the importance of design in the architectural environment and socio-cultural life of society. Questions of the quality of design of a product from the point of view of its materiality and animation, and a utilitarian necessity in the architectural and spatial environment are raising. Problems related to the loss of the main functional role of the design product in the communicative space of the city are describing. Loss of unique qualities of the created objects in favor of industrial filling of city locations with visual noise and disorienting information. In the course of which there is a problem of solving this problem and building new approaches to transforming the integrity of the system "man-design-architecture". The article lists some scientists who have also raised this issue in their works. Provisions are putting forward on the spiritual and semantic role of the architectural and spatial territories in which man is located. About the spiritual and material justification in equipping these locations with new design objects. There are questions of professional competence and the importance of the designer's actions in modern life, as well as the correct use of the synthesis of various arts to create unique and holistic locations in the bosom of the city. The importance of an individual approach to creating a product design, in terms of its situational demand and the need for a specific socio-cultural space. Provisions are putting forward on the specification and individualization of the design product to please the consumer and unique architectural and spatial areas. As well as a departure from the canonical industrial reproduction, and mass ubiquity, which can lead to information load and the creation of visual noise.

Navigating turbulent waters: Crafting learning trajectories in a changing work context

How do newcomers gain access to learning opportunities when they are denied opportunities to practice? Changes in the nature of work, such as labour outsourcing and technological advancements, have created challenges for newcomers to learn. They may be more easily relegated to low-level repetitive tasks, such as scutwork. In these situations, newcomers’ ambiguous position as learners can limit access to participation in practices needed to progress their learning trajectories. Using field-study data, we explore the situated learning of merchant-navy cadets. We show that, when newcomers are not permitted access to participation, the structural arrangements of practice – temporal structures, spatial territories and hierarchical arrangements – hinder learning opportunities. We show, further, that some newcomers leverage these same structural arrangements surreptitiously as resources to access participation, which we conceptualise as stealth work. Consequently, we unveil the soft forms of power at play in crafting access to learning trajectories, making three contributions. First, we show how structural arrangements of a practice can be leveraged to enable learning. Second, we show that gaining access stealthily, requires both normative and counter-normative performances. Third, we show the importance of access in crafting learning trajectories and unpack how such access is navigated by newcomers.

Meis homeobox genes control progenitor competence in the retina

The vertebrate eye is derived from the neuroepithelium, surface ectoderm, and extracellular mesenchyme. The neuroepithelium forms an optic cup in which the spatial separation of three domains is established, namely, the region of multipotent retinal progenitor cells (RPCs), the ciliary margin zone (CMZ)-which possesses both a neurogenic and nonneurogenic potential-and the optic disk (OD), the interface between the optic stalk and the neuroretina. Here, we show by genetic ablation in the developing optic cup that Meis1 and Meis2 homeobox genes function redundantly to maintain the retinal progenitor pool while they simultaneously suppress the expression of genes characteristic of CMZ and OD fates. Furthermore, we demonstrate that Meis transcription factors bind regulatory regions of RPC-, CMZ-, and OD-specific genes, thus providing a mechanistic insight into the Meis-dependent gene regulatory network. Our work uncovers the essential role of Meis1 and Meis2 as regulators of cell fate competence, which organize spatial territories in the vertebrate eye.

Modeling of spatially distributed infiltration in the Iraqi Western Desert

Infiltration process tends to be one of the most essential elements of the hydrological cycle. Comprehensive and thorough information on soil infiltration in both temporal and spatial territories can support maintaining environmental and hydrological development. Traditional methods to measure soil infiltration are costly, time-consuming, and their facility to regain the spatial and temporal inconsistency, particularly in large scale areas. In this context, remote sensing is capable of providing meaningful information for counting preliminary soil infiltration on various spatial scales via spectral reflectance variability. The present study aims at developing a mathematical model to determine the spatially distributed infiltration using artificial neural networks (ANN) combined with geographical information system (GIS), remote sensing (RS), and field infiltration measurements using a double ring infiltrometer in the Wadi Al-Ratga in the Iraqi western desert. The performance of the proposed model was assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively by comparing the results measured against estimated infiltration rate values for each sample. The distribution of estimated infiltration rate values in dry season varies from 56 to 215 mm/h while the distribution of estimated IR values in wet season varies from 12 to 27 mm/h. The results indicate a good agreement between estimated and measured infiltration (R2 = 0.8443, mean absolute percent error (MAPE) = 0.0996, root mean square error (RMSE) = 16.8 mm/h, and relative error (RE) less than 20%). Therefore, this comparative method plays for a considerable role in detecting and mapping soil infiltration by providing timely, fast, reparative, and relatively cheap data.

TYPES AND PATTERNS OF TERRITORY IN THE TRADITIONAL SETTLEMENT OF NGATA TORO

Territory in architecture is defined as a live organisms boundary to determine their demands, mark, and defend it. Territory for humans is not only limited physically and space, but also related to emotional and cultural needs. Research about territories has not been specifically studied in contexts related to cultures that have specific characteristics. Based on this, research has a focus on developing theories on the types and patterns of territories in traditional settlement. This research is naturalistic based on the theoretical framework that is built from the meaning of the results of several studies that have been conducted. In this research, the use of case studies is used as an empirical study to see how phenomena in real life of society, especially at the boundary of phenomena with existing contexts. Case Study uses a single embedded case that has more than one analysis unit. The research location is in Ngata Toro, To-Kulawi, which is a traditional settlement that has character and characteristics. The expected outcome of this research is to develop and build concepts of patterns and types of spatial territories in architecture related to behavioral and cultural aspects.

Spatial distribution and breeding territories of Bonelli’s Eagle Aquila fasciata in the western Anti-Atlas Mountains, Morocco

The North African population of Bonelli’s Eagle Aquila fasciata (Vieillot, 1822) is limited to the south by the northern fringe of the Sahara Desert. This study provides the first data on the spatial distribution and density of breeding Bonelli’s Eagles in south-west Morocco, at the southern limit of their breeding distribution in the Western Palearctic. We used broad-scale sampling to investigate spatial patterns in occupancy of territorial pairs of Bonelli’s Eagles in an area of ∼29 715 km2 in the western Anti-Atlas Mountains, southern Morocco, during 2016–2018. We found 28 nesting territories containing 40 used nests, heterogeneously distributed in areas of high topographic variation, from 60 to 1 890 m asl. The average nearest-neighbour nest distance was 14.12 ± 9.90 km and varied from 2.65 km in the north-west to 37.80 km in the pre-Saharan lands in the south-west portion of the study area. This work shows the importance of the western Anti-Atlas Mountains as one of the most significant strongholds of the species in Morocco. However, there is a need for systematic analyses of the different factors affecting the distribution of the species to implement conservation actions of this peripheral population.

A conceptual typology of the spatial territories of the peripheral areas of metropolises

An increase in the size of the urban population of the world and the extensive urbanization in the peripheral areas of metropolises is one of the emerging phenomena of the twentieth century, and for several years has become the implicit theme of urban and regional studies. Since the beginning of the 20th century, many attempts have been made to conceptualize these emerging phenomena, which in some cases, the multiplicity of these concepts, have led to confusion in the definition and understanding of the phenomenon. The present paper uses a meta-study strategy to study 19 concepts related to the spatial territories of the peripheral areas of metropolises, according to the parameters of spatial structure, functional structure, and semantic structure, and we, respectively, categorized them in three types: a) A contiguous peri-urban/intermediate peri-urban/rural peri-urban; b) An independent, productive, regular, sustainable peri-urban/dependent, destructive, disturbed, unstable peri-urban, c) An objective and subjective peri-urban. Obviously, this research, with an emphasis on the distinctive characteristics of the three typologies, can be an important step towards a more comprehensive understanding of these spatial territories.

Detachable Pockets and Letter Folds: Spatial Formalism and the Portable Interiors of the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Revisiting Richardson's Pamela as a site of “spatial formalism,” this essay maintains that the notion of the domestic interior as a setting conducive to psychological interiority requires further materialist analysis. It argues that the interiority of Pamela hinges less on characters' emotions than on its ability to move between different spatial interiors, from the oft-cited interiors of domestic architecture to the interiors of spaces that initially register as objects, such as women's detachable pockets as well as books and letters themselves. Ultimately, Pamela lays claim to her selfhood through effecting a dynamic whereby her movable possessions—her letters, her pockets in particular—become spatial territories of the self that challenge the authority of land ownership conferred to her social superiors. She effects, in other words, a shift in social relations as defined by property as well as by marriage through her ability to transform the interiority afforded by her everyday possessions into a movable estate of the self.

The Promised Territories: The Production of Branded Housing Projects in Contemporary Turkey

Cities in Turkey, following the neoliberal restructuring of the country, have undergone a process of transformation in the last decade at a greater pace than experienced in previous periods. Through these processes, while new territories have been constructed, previous formations have been dismantled. While some of these constructed territories are abstract (e.g. Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics [NUTS] regions), some are tangible and physically defined such as branded housing enclaves.Branded housing projects produce territories in the form of housing enclaves, which provide key services and facilities within their confines exclusively for project residents. By 2013, the number of branded housing projects located in Istanbul alone numbered 852 with the number of units provided by these projects amounting to 7.7% of the total housing stock the city (Saricayir 01/21/2014). This paper argues that these territories are co-produced by political society and civil society (in Gramscian terms): while political society regulates and directly contributes to the production of these territories through public actors involved in the branded housing projects, civil society contributes through the production of social consent for such developments. The article discusses the role of political society and civil society in the production of branded housing projects by focusing on the case of Emlak Konut GYO (Real Estate Partnership) projects developed in Istanbul between 2003 and 2014. Firstly, the role of political society is discussed through the roles of TOKI (Housing Development Administration of Turkey) and Emlak Konut GYO as major public actors in the development of these territories; and secondly, the role of civil society is discussed through excavating the traces of production of social consent for branded housing projects in news articles published on Emlak Konut GYO projects between 2003 and 2014. The paper concludes that branded housing projects are emerging as spatial territories in contemporary Turkey as a result of hegemonic struggle through political society and civil society.

Environmental Justice and Regional Political Ecology converge in the other California

This article illuminates the value of the concept of the region in political ecology and environmental justice studies by presenting three arguments about the role of regions in environmental justice social movements engaged in climate change mitigation in California's San Joaquin Valley. First, regional planning agencies and environmental justice advocates are engaged in conflicts over not only the content of regional climate change plans, but the very definitions of region and the authority used to put these regional visions into action. Second, regional organizing provides environmental justice movements with new opportunities to address regional economic patterns and to negotiate with regional planning agencies, both of which influence local manifestations of environmental injustice. Third, regional strategies raise significant dilemmas for these movements as they try to sustain engagement across extensive spatial territories and engage with a broad set of policy and economic protagonists. Together, this analysis demonstrates that a dynamic approach to regions, regionalism, and regionalization can assist political ecology and environmental justice scholars in their common aim of understanding the co-production of social and environmental inequity and collective action to change it.Key Words: Environmental justice, regional political ecology, climate change mitigation, regional planning, rural community development

Single unit action potentials in humans and the effect of seizure activity.

Spike-sorting algorithms have been used to identify the firing patterns of isolated neurons ('single units') from implanted electrode recordings in patients undergoing assessment for epilepsy surgery, but we do not know their potential for providing helpful clinical information. It is important therefore to characterize both the stability of these recordings and also their context. A critical consideration is where the units are located with respect to the focus of the pathology. Recent analyses of neuronal spiking activity, recorded over extended spatial areas using microelectrode arrays, have demonstrated the importance of considering seizure activity in terms of two distinct spatial territories: the ictal core and penumbral territories. The pathological information in these two areas, however, is likely to be very different. We investigated, therefore, whether units could be followed reliably over prolonged periods of times in these two areas, including during seizure epochs. We isolated unit recordings from several hundred neurons from four patients undergoing video-telemetry monitoring for surgical evaluation of focal neocortical epilepsies. Unit stability could last in excess of 40 h, and across multiple seizures. A key finding was that in the penumbra, spike stereotypy was maintained even during the seizure. There was a net tendency towards increased penumbral firing during the seizure, although only a minority of units (10-20%) showed significant changes over the baseline period, and notably, these also included neurons showing significant reductions in firing. In contrast, within the ictal core territories, regions characterized by intense hypersynchronous multi-unit firing, our spike sorting algorithms failed as the units were incorporated into the seizure activity. No spike sorting was possible from that moment until the end of the seizure, but recovery of the spike shape was rapid following seizure termination: some units reappeared within tens of seconds of the end of the seizure, and over 80% reappeared within 3 min (τrecov = 104 ± 22 s). The recovery of the mean firing rate was close to pre-ictal levels also within this time frame, suggesting that the more protracted post-ictal state cannot be explained by persistent cellular neurophysiological dysfunction in either the penumbral or the core territories. These studies lay the foundation for future investigations of how these recordings may inform clinical practice.See Kimchi and Cash (doi:10.1093/awv264) for a scientific commentary on this article.

Psychosis and the ineffable space of modernism

The aim of this psychoanalytic reflection on architecture is to reclaim for space its symbolic and contingent status. It returns to Le Corbusier's concept of ineffable space, a radiant space of explosive energy, in order to link it to the psychoanalytic concept of psychosis. In psychosis, the subject is decoupled from its reality because a key component of the subject's symbolic framework—what Jacques Lacan calls the master signifier—is foreclosed to it. It is not repressed and hence unconscious, it simply does not exist for the subject. This paper outlines the theory of psychosis in psychoanalysis and argues that perspective, in which space seems always already organised for the viewer, is such a symbolic frame. Le Corbusier's vision of ineffable space is a vision of space in which this frame is foreclosed to its subject, the viewer. In its absence, the subject finds itself detached in a dynamic fluidity that elides the familiar spatial territories of inside/outside, near/far… In the literature of philosophy, cultural criticism and the social sciences, psychosis is regarded as a subjective position within the social-cultural field. This paper extends this use of psychosis to space; it concludes by situating architecture within this broader disciplinary context.

Tissue-Specific Expression of FLOWERING LOCUS T in Arabidopsis Is Maintained Independently of Polycomb Group Protein Repression

The Polycomb Group (PcG) pathway represses transcription through a mechanism conserved among plants and animals. PcG-mediated repression can determine spatial territories of gene expression, but it remains unclear whether PcG-mediated repression is a regulatory requirement for all targets. Here, we show the role of PcG proteins in the spatial regulation of FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT), a main activator of flowering in Arabidopsis thaliana exclusively expressed in the vasculature. Strikingly, the loss of PcG repression causes down-regulation of FT. In addition, our results show how the effect of PcG-mediated regulation differs for target genes and that, for FT expression, it relies primarily on tissue differentiation.

Erzählter Raum und Erzählraum: (Kultur)Raumkonstruktion zwischen Diskurs und Performanz

ahlraums vor. Abstract. The aim of the article is to analyze the construction of geographical realities in the media by so called world insiders. Which attributes do the world insiders ascribe to spatial territories and which dia- and prognoses of the contemporary world do they o er? In addition, the question has to be raised as to why their interpretations are so appealing and popular. Two theoretical approaches - discourse and performance/performativity - form the framework of the analysis. The theoretical link between the discursive and argumentative level on the one hand and the performative level on the other hand combines verbal and non-verbal geography-making. Our claim is that both levels are essential for an analysis of the world insiders and their ways of world construction. To integrate these two levels we suggest the concepts of Narrative space and Narrated space.

The Jewish Ghetto and the Americanization of Space in Mary Antin and Her Contemporaries

The Jewish Ghetto and the Americanization of Space in Mary Antin and Her Contemporaries Maria Karafilis In the first decade of the twentieth century, Congress appointed the Dillingham Commission to investigate the effects of immigration on the U.S. and to make recommendations for future policy. The commission released its 42-volume report on the "immigration question" in 1911. The commission's report judged recent immigrants, primarily from southern and eastern Europe, inferior to their predecessors, primarily from northern and western Europe. It also advocated specific immigration restriction policies, including the implementation of literacy tests and country-of-origin quotas, which were adopted in 1917 and 1921, respectively; doubling the head tax on immigrants; increasing the amount of money required in the immigrant's possession at the port of arrival; and writing policies that favored the immigration of men with families.1 The recommendations were the culmination of anti-immigrant sentiment that had been brewing for decades. Documents such as the Dillingham Commission report, which told a story of degeneration and decline in the quality of newcomers, were not the only narratives circulating at the time. An alternative account of immigration can be found in Mary Antin's The Promised Land (1911), which challenges the legitimacy and authority of the official report with its own type of Dillingham Commission. In her autobiographical narrative, Antin includes a character named Miss Dillingham, a teacher in the schools of the Boston Ghetto who recognizes the talent and promise of her immigrant pupils and is especially encouraging of Mary, having one of the student's poems printed in a local newspaper as proof of the child's intelligence and aptitude.2 In this essay I read Antin's The Promised Land against nativist narratives, the push for immigration restriction laws, and other turn of the century [End Page 129] depictions by immigrant and nonimmigrant writers of the Jewish Ghetto and its inhabitants. I combine an extended discussion of U.S. immigration policy from the years 1882–1924 with an analysis of how Antin, in response to the often heated debate over the immigration question, manipulated a stock, popular literary genre, the immigrant conversion narrative, to achieve particular ends. One of the ways that Antin appropriates this narrative is by eschewing its most common form, immigrant realism, in favor of what I call immigrant romance. The latter frees her from a focus on the harsh economic and social realities that many immigrants faced; the attendant sensory description of the sights, sounds, and smells of the ghettoscape; and the use of dialect. It allows her, primarily through her use of abstraction and metonymy, as I discuss below, to reconfigure the space of the urban ghetto as a site of infinite possibility. In her narrative, Antin seeks to counter the anti-immigrationist claims of many of her contemporaries, demonstrate the fitness of Russian-Jewish immigrants for U.S. citizenship, and reconceptualize the very notion of "Americanness." Traditionally viewed as a stifling, pestilential space that threatens the surrounding nation, the ghetto for Antin becomes a dynamic space of freedom and openness. She also challenges dominant views of the inhabitants of the ghetto and suggests that immigrants such as herself, individuals devoted to the ideals of liberty and equality and to the ability to improve themselves through education, are not only adequate material for U.S. citizenship but perhaps the "truest" Americans of all. Reading The Promised Land through the lens of spatial practice illuminates how the story intersects with contemporary narratives on immigration and the United States as a field imaginary: the locus of freedom that was either, depending on one's perspective, contracting or expanding.3 In addition, Antin's depiction of the ghetto transforms the mappable locale, making it not just a static, claustrophobic backdrop but an integral, dynamic, and democratizing site of liberation, for it is her mobility, her success in moving through space, traversing psychological and spatial territories, exceeding boundaries, and taking advantage of the mix and heterogeneity surrounding her in various U.S. metropolises that fosters her Americanization. In other words, a primary way in which Mary achieves independence and becomes an "American" is her ability to cross ostensible barriers, both spatial and...